The ABC/Post survey has been asking this question for 25 years now, and the number has been as high as 56 cents and as low as 43 cents. Budget experts would say that while there certainly is waste in government, it's nowhere near that high.

Based on Public Agenda's research, when people say half of every tax dollar is wasted, they're not analyzing bloated defense purchasing or Medicare fraud (although those stories have an impact). They're expressing an overall frustration with government – and based on the same ABC/Post survey, frustrations are running high. Two-thirds of those surveyed say they're "dissatisfied" or "angry" with the government. According to the Post:

The opening is clear: Public dissatisfaction with how Washington operates is at its highest level in Post-ABC polling in more than a decade -- since the months after the Republican-led government shutdown in 1996 -- and negative ratings of the two major parties hover near record highs.

There are two lessons here, one very specific, and the other more general.

The specific point is about how these levels of distrust shape the debate over the federal deficit and the national debt. There are solutions to the government's grim long-term fiscal problems; the Choosing the Nation's Fiscal Future report is full of them. Public Agenda's research has shown, however, that one of the biggest barriers to solving the budget problem is the public's lack of trust in leaders. People simply aren't confident that the government will use their money wisely. They're worried that if they agree to spending cuts or tax increases, the government won't put that money to good use.

More broadly, this shows the public's distaste for gridlock and hyper-partisanship in Washington. And it also shows the opportunity for a different approach: real public engagement that allows citizens' voice to be heard and their concerns to play a role in decision making. Public engagement, properly executed, can break through gridlock and allow decisions to be firmly grounded in the public's values and priorities.

Surveys like this send a clear message that politics as usual isn't working for the American public. If we're going to solve our budget problems – or any of our other problems, for that matter – we need to get that trust back, and that means getting the public back into the process.

Balancing the budget in the late 1990s required sustained, bipartisan effort, and a combination of both spending controls and tax increases. But it also came at a political cost to a number of the politicians involved.

That's why the Committee on the Fiscal Future suggested that real efforts to deal with our long-term budget problems start next year, to give the government time to deal with the economic crisis, and time to build consensus on solutions. History shows this can be done. And in this case, if we learn from history, maybe we can repeat it.

Friday, February 5th, 2010 | Scott Bittle

The No Child Left Behind law, which for good or ill has been the center of American education policy over the past decade, is up for an overhaul. That's the word from the Obama administration, which says a central point will be changing how schools are rated, one of the most controversial parts of the law.
Public Agenda's research shows that teachers are open to many different ways of assessing their work. More than half of teachers, 56 percent, said test scores were a "good' or "excellent" way of measuring teacher effectiveness, but other yardsticks were more popular, such as student engagement (92 percent), how much their own students learn compared with others (72 percent) and feedback from administrators (70 percent).

But there's may be an even more important hurdle here in improving schools, which is that significant numbers of teachers are frustrated with their work. Our Teaching For A Living study found four in 10 teachers "disheartened," struggling with their work environment and their ability to make a difference.

Frustration like that is bound to affect their success with students – and their attitudes about reform. As the nation continues to try and make American schools all they should be, one of the greatest challenges is figuring out whether good leadership and different policies could re-energize these teachers, or whether they'd be better off doing something else.

Thursday, February 4th, 2010 | Scott Bittle

The House voted today to raise the national debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion, but by a pretty close vote on what's usually a routine matter. Opponents said the debt has to be brought under control; supporters pointed out that without an increase in the debt limit, the government would end up defaulting on its debt, throwing the world financial markets into chaos. Again.

That doesn't help the public come to grips with this. Budgets are all about setting priorities, and while this budget proposal tells us what the Obama administration thinks the priorities should be, there's nothing in this long, convoluted process that helps the public sort through options and choices to figure out what their priorities are.

The second point that strikes us comes from the sheer volume of coverage, analyzing the budget proposal from so many angles that it's hard for anyone who's not immersed in the coverage to keep up. (If you want to make a start on it, we'd suggest this roundup of stories from almost every angle in the Washington Post's 44 blog, and of course the Choosing Our Fiscal Future news tracker). No matter what angle you're interested in, somebody's covered it.

Thursday, January 28th, 2010 |

It was freezing as usual last night in Emporia, Kansas – midway between Wichita and Kansas City, a great case study for the winters for which the Midwest is known. But heat was in evidence as students all over campus at Emporia State University logged on to Twitter to listen, comment and discuss the State of the Union address and the GOP response – viewed from the prism of the federal budget deficit and national debt.

The live chat (click here to take a look at the students' comments), moderated by Public Agenda on behalf of @FacingUp, was nonpartisan and devoid of political name-calling, with passion instead attaching itself to the issues: the size of the deficit and debt, the politicians' and students' own proposals, and the degree to which each might help the nation get on a more solid fiscal footing.

Emporia's economics students, led by Professor Rob Catlett, have been studying the problem as participants in the Students Face Up to the Nation's Finances nonpartisan curriculum on the nation's fiscal future. We're pleased to announce that three of them are among the winners of the final round of the Facing Up contest for essays relating to the deficit and debt crisis and what should be done about it.

And here's the official winner list:

Best Multimedia Essay By A College Student

"It's Up To Us" by Kelsey Ryan, Shane Wilson, & Kellen Jenkins of Emporia State (colleagues at The Bulletin, ESU's award-winning newspaper, seen here together celebrating a job well-done)

Best Written Essay By A College Student

"Means-Testing Social Security" by Zachary Skaggs of American University, in Washington, D.C. (an enthusiastic student of economics, currently prepping for med school, with an understandable strong interest in health care reform and cost control, among other things)

Congratulations to all! And thanks to everyone who entered – the discussion is one of the most important parts of our Students Face Up program (available free of charge thanks to a grant from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation) to help students and other concerned citizens get involved in making choices to build a better future.

Each prize is worth $500 (ESU's winners will have to split their prize three ways). But that's not the only take-away for our winners, who plan to continue raising the consciousness of other Americans on this issue, especially those in their own generation, who have a lot at stake as the national debt clock zooms forward.

Thursday, January 28th, 2010 | Ruth Wooden

In the State of the Union speech last night, President Obama said the one of the most thoughtful ways of attacking our budget crisis is to name a bipartisan commission to guide our fiscal future onto a sustainable path, in contrast to the unsustainable path we are on now.

A commission of experts can certainly come up with reasonable suggestions for how to create a sustainable federal budget. But the debate over the national debt and the federal budget isn't just about money, it's about values, and as President Obama said last night, it's also about trust. The federal budget is an expression of our priorities as a country. How we trust our government to spend the taxpayers' money (and who gets taxed) says something about what Americans value, and what we don't.

Budget debates reflect fundamental differences in public values, priorities, and the tradeoffs they're willing to make to accomplish their goals. People hold sharply different values about what they want or need from government, what government can actually deliver, and what role it should play in daily life. These differences in beliefs and interests need to be recognized and reconciled before the government can make long-term budget decisions.

If you judge the United States by its budget, however, you might be forgiven for thinking Americans are a little muddled on key points. As a nation, there's a fundamental mismatch between what our government spends and what takes in, a situation that's going to get worse in the foreseeable future. So far, our political system we've been wanting more from the government than we've been willing to pay for some time.

One of the most crucial points about the Choosing Our Nation's Fiscal Future report is that it calls the question and asks for dialogue on some of the fundamental questions that underlie our budget problems. How big should our government be? What kind of services do we want? How are we going to pay for it? What do we need to do to ensure fairness between older and younger generations?

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | Francie Grace

Your thoughts won't flash on the U.S. Capitol podium, but this year's State of the Union address (9 p.m. ET, on most TV networks, many radio outlets, and live on the web and the iPhone) will be different.

As soon as President Obama begins delivering his report on the condition of this country and his proposals for what should be done to face our most urgent problems, YouTube will begin accepting videos with follow-up questions for the president, whose comments are expected to include the formation of a commission on the federal budget deficit (for more on that, click here).

Folks who log onto the Citizen Tube page will also be able to vote on questions for the president, who will answer some of them next week in a live online event.

But you don't have to go on YouTube to have a real time interactive experience with the State of the Union. Log onto Twitter during the president's speech, the Republican response, or afterwards, and if you include the hashtag #FiscalFuture in your message, your comments on the federal budget deficit and national debt will be part of the ongoing conversation.

You can view the conversation live by clicking on #FiscalFuture in your own message or elsewhere, or you can go to search.Twitter.com and search for #Fiscal Future.

Our discussion is nonpartisan, so please try to stick to the subject of the problem and potential solutions, and play nice. We hope to see you there!

Thursday, January 21st, 2010 | Scott Bittle

The idea of a bipartisan commission to draft a plan to get the federal budget on a sound footing has been embraced by President Obama and Congressional leaders, and will likely be a major point in next week's State of the Union speech. Under the plan, a panel named by the White House and leaders of both parties would come up with proposals by December to close the deficit and control the debt. As part of the deal, Congressional leaders promise they would act on the commission plan quickly.

You're going to hear lots of furious debate over whether this is a good idea or not (you can sample some of the criticism from the left and the right on this). There's one big question that has yet to be answered, however: how does the public factor into this?

We can't solve our long-term fiscal problems without engaging the public. Most of the options boil down to spending cuts or tax increases, and very likely a combination of both. None of them can be implemented without public support. Plus, how the federal government raises and spends money is an expression of what is important to us as a society. If we're going to be setting priorities – and that's a crucial part of this process – the public's voice needs to be heard.